Monday, 16 December 2013

After only one night
in Kay’s cosy home in Stanley with a lot of laundry, re-packing and a night of
office work, we hit the long road from Stanley to North Arm and then off-road
towards the SW corner of East Falkland, to a remote, lonely house (belonging to
the North Arm settlement) otherwise used by farm staff for herding cattle etc.,
which would be our home for the next 4 days. An almost 5 hour drive! It has to
be said that despite the images of marine life, diving etc. on this blog, much
of our time in the Falklands is inevitably spent in cars, typically 4 WDs.
Distances are huge and roads are poor or non-existent, which makes for long
durations of rough vehicle travel for getting almost anywhere. The southern
half of East Falkland, south of the Isthmus of Darwin and Goose Green, is
mostly made up of the great plain of Lafonia, mostly dry grassland reminiscent
of Patagonia, with very little human population.

Outhouses like “ours”
at Danson Harbour were built in the past and are still used today for working
these huge lands, especially for cattle ranching. They are occupied only
sporadically, whenever farm staff needs accommodation for a couple of days.
Heating is by a peat-fired kitchen stove with back boiler for providing warm
water and a fireplace in the lounge. A diesel-powered generator in an adjacent
shed provides electricity for a few hours a day.

Our team of 4 joined
forces with the team of the Shallow Marine
Surveys Group (SMSG), who coordinate and conduct assessments of the status of inshore
resources around the Falkland Islands. SMSG is headed by a core group of
experienced biologists and divers and assisted by volunteers from the local
community who carry out scientific collections and identifications,
photographic surveys, and marine ecological research that contributes to local
and regional conservation policy initiatives.

Days started at around
7.30 am with Pieter yelling “How would you like your eggs today?” until he
would have a response from everyone. After a cooked breakfast for fuelling up,
we would load the 4WDs with dive and sampling equipment and drive to the boat
launch site on a secluded beach, about ½ h off-road driving away. The team
worked in 2 groups, each of which would go for 1 or 2 dives from a Zodiac with
outboard engine, 15-30 min from the boat launch site.

The dives were very
rewarding scientifically, but challenging due to the environmental conditions –
very cold waters, currents, wildlife, weather conditions and the giant kelp
forest all of which can bear special hazards for divers. Moreover, the lack of
a recompression chamber on the Islands was the limiting factor for not working
in depths greater than ~ 20 m. Nonetheless, we very much enjoyed and managed
the diving with safety and organisation.

A highlight of our
dives was an underwater encounter with a male Sea Lion while we were sampling seaweeds.
The big creature came very close to us and after a few “dancing” movements, he
left us to continue our work.

The seaweed flora of
the Falkland Sound area has not been studied in depth since the days of
Skotsberg 110 years ago, as the access is difficult in such a remote place and
scuba diving for phycological objectives had not been conducted in this area.
This left us feeling like genuine explorers, something that a scientist does not
feel very often in his career these days. Indeed, this was the exploration of a
pristine environment in a region rarely ever visited by phycologists, in which
one can expect to encounter many undescribed red algal species.